Turner leads in mayor’s race, Buzbee second in new poll

From left, former Houston city councilwoman Sue Lovell, businessman and lawyer Tony Buzbee, Mayor Sylvester Turner and Bill King at a Sept. 3 candidate forum earlier this month.

Photo: Karen Warren, Staff Photographer / Houston Chronicle

Mayor Sylvester Turner leads trial lawyer and businessman Tony Buzbee by 17 points, according to a KHOU/Houston Public Media poll released Wednesday.

The survey of 516 registered likely voters found Turner well ahead of the 12-candidate field with 37 percent, followed by Buzbee at 19.6 percent and second-time mayoral candidate Bill King at 9.5 percent. The poll’s margin of error is 4.3 percent.

With less than four weeks to go until early voting, the results provide the first clear and public picture of the Houston mayor’s race, which has intensified in recent weeks. Candidates regularly have met face-to-face at forums and stepped up their attacks on each other through ads and at stops along the campaign trail.

The poll shows Turner running far ahead of everyone else but with nowhere near enough support to win outright, said Bob Stein, a Rice University political science professor who conducted the poll from Sept. 3 to Sept. 15. Stein surveyed about two-thirds of respondents by cell phone and the rest by landline.

"If the election were held today, Mayor Turner would win - and after spending millions of his own money, Tony Buzbee is getting less than 20% of the vote," Sue Davis, communications director for Turner's campaign, said in a statement. "Houstonians have figured out that Buzbee has no experience, no plan for the future and no campaign other than trashing our city."

The ever-confident Buzbee, of course,interpreted the poll differently, noting that Turner still is about 13 percentage points away from winning the election without a runoff.

“He’s in big trouble,” Buzbee said. “If he doesn’t win outright, he can’t win. When an incumbent mayor can’t get 50 percent, most people that vote for him don’t go back to him in the runoff. I think we’re in great shape.”

King said the result shows “Houstonians are fed up with failed leadership and broken promises” under Turner.

“More than 60 percent of those polled are undecided or have already decided on a replacement for Sylvester Turner,” King said in a statement. “Tony Buzbee is spending millions to buy City Hall, but only has a soft base of support to show as a return on his massive investment.”

Councilman Dwight Boykins received 3.5 percent support in the poll, while 0.4 percent of voters said they likely would vote for former city councilwoman Sue Lovell.

Otherwise, 3.3 percent of respondents said they likely would support a candidate other than Turner, Buzbee, King, Boykins or Lovell. Another 21.5 percent were undecided, and 5.2 percent refused to respond.

Early voting starts Oct. 21, with election day on Nov. 5. If no candidate finishes with 50 percent plus one vote, the race will be decided in a December runoff between the top two finishers.

In a potential runoff matchup, the poll found Turner beating Buzbee 54.6 percent to 40.2 percent, and King by 56.8 to 34.1 percent.

The poll results are favorable for Turner but also show he has “a lot of work ahead,” Houston political analyst Nancy Sims said, adding there still is plenty of time for the race to shift before residents cast their votes.

“We need to keep in mind that this poll was conducted just after Labor Day, when we expect people to be tuning in, but they may or may not have,” Sims said. “I expect this campaign to get more intensely negative going forward, and it doesn’t reflect that either.”

Stein said he was a bit surprised that King — who narrowly lost a runoff to Turner in 2015 — polled “a distant third.” Stein attributed the result to Buzbee’s ability to outspend King on advertising and cut into King’s base of support. Buzbee is self-funding his campaign and already had contributed $7.5 million as of June 30.

Buzbee said he viewed the result as vindication of his argument that the race largely is between him and Turner.

"The bigger story is that Bill King is finished. That should be the headline. He's done," Buzbee said. “The truth is, he's not relevant. And I've known that for three months."

King said he was polling “at about the same spot” in 2015 and was confident he would end up in the runoff again.

Buzbee also contended that the results do not reflect his internal poll numbers — which show him closer to Turner — because his campaign is not just targeting the likely or certain voters polled by Stein.

Sims said this argument would work better without the presence of the 2020 presidential election, which she said is eating up attention.

“Mr. Buzbee may be bringing new folks to the polls, but there’s going to be a lot of regular folks staying home,” Sims said. “I just think that people are so focused nationally that they’re not paying attention to the local politics, which is unfortunate.”

Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said recent election results — including the 2018 midterms, which drew an influx of female and young Latino voters — makes the city electorate unpredictable.

“In mayoral elections, you’re going to have more traditional voters turning out to vote, under normal circumstances,” Cortina said. “The question is, are we living in normal circumstances? The answer is, not necessarily.”

Cortina also predicted the race would become highly partisan, with Turner comparing Buzbee to President Trump in recent ads. In the poll, 42 percent of voters said it is very important or important for the next mayor to be a Democrat.

“Ideologically speaking, the candidates are pretty well identified one way or another, and this vote is going to be along party lines, even though it’s a nonpartisan race,” Cortina said.

In response to the poll, 51 percent rated Turner’s performance as “excellent” or “good,” while 27 percent said he has done a “fair” job as mayor. Another 19 percent rated his performance as “poor.” About 58 percent of respondents said the city is headed in the right direction, while 30 percent said it is headed in the wrong direction.

The poll also found 58.5 percent of respondents support Metro’s $3.5 billion bond proposal, which would authorize the transit authority to move forward on a menu of projects that includes light rail extensions and the expanded use of bus rapid transit. Only 10.5 percent are opposed to the proposal, the survey found, while 31 percent were undecided.

Those surveyed also named flooding as the most important problem facing the city, at 17 percent, followed by street conditions at 11 percent and crime at 8 percent. Other top issues were traffic congestion, homelessness and public transportation.

Jasper covers City Hall, local politics and breaking news for the Houston Chronicle through the Hearst Journalism Fellowship program. He previously covered Bexar County and local politics for the San Antonio Express-News. Jasper graduated from Northwestern University in 2017 with degrees in journalism and political science. He has interned for the Tampa Bay Times, Washington Post and Fortune magazine.